Zi Yuanzhen floats above the shattered skies of the human frontier, body still trembling from the final bolt of his Saint King tribulation.
His skin is darkened, his robes in tatters, but his eyes—
His eyes burn with the quiet, lethal resolve of a man who has spent centuries preparing for this exact moment.
He does not hesitate.
He plunges his awareness into his dantian—
and a heavy jade seal rises into his palm, glowing with ancient power.
The Quasi-Supreme Weapon: Jade Seal.
Saint essence floods into it like a tidal wave.
The seal thunders to life.
A pillar of jade radiance erupts upward, carving a perfect arc through the sky—
and slams into the descending attack of the Star Fire clan's Saint King.
The flaming meteor strike—strong enough to incinerate an entire city—
shatters like fragile glass.
The Star Fire Saint King freezes.
His pupils contract.
"…The Jade Seal."
Terror pours through him so sharply that he nearly drops his weapon.
A quasi-supreme weapon.
The human race had a quasi-supreme weapon.
His mind fractures with questions.
*Why didn't they use it earlier?
Why hide it?
Why NOW?*
But none of that matters.
His condition matters. His future matters.
He is injured.
He was barely not killed by the Great Saint earlier.
And he cannot kill a fresh Saint King who wields a quasi-supreme weapon.
His scalp numbs.
Escape.
Escape now.
Even fighting a single human Saint King would have been difficult.
Now the human race has two individuals with Saint King-level combat power—
one fully ascended, one capable of forbidden-state combat.
He already has an excuse ready for the Fire Divine Court.
"They had two Saint Kings. I was ambushed."
He can survive the punishment.
But if he dies here—
Everything ends.
He begins to pull away—
—When Zi Yuanzhen lifts the Jade Seal, hate sharpens his voice:
"Die."
Zi Yuanzhen had never dared reveal the seal before.
As a Great Saint, he could not use it properly, and exposing it would have been courting death.
The Fire Divine Race would have trampled a Great Saint wielding a supreme treasure.
But a Saint King wielding one?
That is no longer a target.
It is a threat.
On the Fire Divine Race must think twice about attacking casually.
The Jade Seal flares.
A single jade character—Fire—rises from its surface.
The rune ignites.
FWOOOOM!
A colossal fireball, compressed from pure law, streaks across the sky like a newborn sun.
It crashes toward the Meteor Saint King with a power that could erase mountains.
Meteor Saint King roars in rage and terror.
His Dao manifests—
The Meteor Bow.
He pulls the bowstring and fires a blazing meteor arrow.
The arrow collides with the jade fireball—
the sky detonates—
and both attacks vanish in a hurricane of light.
Zi Yuanzhen does not pause.
His Dao appears behind him: The Purple Jade Sword.
The Jade Seal vibrates again—
and dozens of glowing jade characters erupt into the air, forming spectral blades.
They shoot toward the Meteor Saint King like guided missiles.
The Saint King grits his teeth and draws his natal weapon again.
Meteor arrows flood out—destroying sword after sword—
—but the final blade refuses to fall.
It tears through the meteor explosion—
and hurtles directly toward the Saint King's heart.
Meteor Saint King feels death brush his spine.
He raises his bow—
But before the jade sword reaches him—
A multicoloured palm materialises in the air.
Its fingers close.
CRACK—
The jade sword shatters.
Zi Yuanzhen's eyes widen.
A new figure descends from the collapsing clouds.
A man with a cloak made of flame-like feathers, five colours burning across his skin—
Each colour represents a different elemental fire law.
A Saint King of the Five-Colour Flame Clan.
One of the Fire Divine Race's most terrifying subordinate clans.
Zi Yuanzhen's face sinks further when his gaze drops to the man's right hand—
A gauntlet, glowing with five rotating elemental sigils.
A weapon radiating the unmistakable, crushing aura—
—of a Quasi-Supreme Weapon.
Two Saint Kings.
Both are wielding quasi-supreme weapons.
Zi Yuanzhen's grip tightens on his Jade Seal.
He has stepped into the Saint King realm for less than an hour.
And already—
A life-and-death clash between quasi-supreme weapons is moments from erupting.
Zi Yuanzhen watches the two enemy Saint Kings glance at one another. Their eyes narrow. A subtle flicker of spiritual vibration ripples between them—silent, swift, unmistakable.
"Spirit transmission," Zi Yuanzhen realises, his expression tightening.
"They're coordinating. They intend to kill me together."
Retreat is no longer an option.
If he runs—Humanity in the Supreme World will collapse.
If he runs, the Fire Divine Race will march unchecked into the Human World.
If he runs, he will disgrace his sect, his lineage, and be barred forever from the Human World, that sacred sanctuary created by the Three Human Supremes and strengthened further when the Demon Ancestor entered it. Now, its strength rivals the Supreme World itself.
He breathes once, deeply.
Then lifts the Jade Seal.
The quasi-supreme weapon answers instantly.
BOOM—
A field explodes outward, swallowing the sky around him.
Jade Dominion Field
Space crystallises into endless slabs of translucent jade.
Ancient characters glow across the jade landscape, each rune humming with a suppressive authority drawn from the Jade Seal's legacy.
Zi Yuanzhen plants his feet firmly as the field expands—
pushing toward the two enemy Saint Kings…
…until a new pressure blooms.
The Fire Serpent Saint King raises his right hand.
A gauntlet—gleaming with five shifting colours—erupts with a terrifying aura.
Quasi-Supreme.
A second one.
A ripple of prismatic flame spreads outward, devouring sky and space.
Five-Colour Inferno Field
The jade field collides with the five-colour flames.
For a moment—
Jade holds firm.
Slightly stronger…
but not decisively.
And then—
The battle begins.
Jade meteors crash from above—
Five-colour serpents lash upward—
Meteor arrows whistle through world-holes—
And Zi Yuanzhen stands at the centre of an exploding universe of jade light.
The Jade Seal roars in his hand, sending out characters that turn into:
*Swords
Seals
Chains
Lotus-blades
Jade phantoms*
All streaking toward the two Saint Kings.
Zi Yuanzhen fights with the ferocity of a man defending his entire race.
He slams the Jade Seal downward—
A pillar of jade light descends and crushes the Meteor Saint King into the ground, shattering a crater.
He flicks a finger—
A spinning jade disc cleaves through five-colored flame serpents, dispersing them like smoke.
He steps forward—
The entire field shifts with him, suppressing the two Saint Kings by a fraction more each breath.
Zi Yuanzhen holds the advantage.
But only at first.
Because—
Quasi-supreme weapons are not gentle.
Their power comes at a price.
Zi Yuanzhen's saint essence burns like oil in a furnace.
His breathing deepens.
His expression tightens.
Each attack grows heavier to lift, heavier to sustain.
He is alone. There are two.
And though he suppresses them, though he dominates…
…his advantage erodes with every passing heartbeat.
The Meteor Saint King regains his footing, bleeding but grinning savagely.
The Five-Colour Saint King wipes ash from his lips, raising his gauntlet again.
Two against one.
Zi Yuanzhen's face pales slightly.
The Jade Field flickers at its edges.
But he does not retreat.
Because he cannot.
---
Elsewhere — Lou Yuan's battlefield
Five corpses fall through the sky—burning, blasted, shredded by starlight claws and spear trajectories of constellations.
Lou Yuan stands amid drifting ash.
Even wounded.
Even drained.
Even stripped of his forbidden state—
He is invincible among the Great Saints.
He wipes blood from his lips, ready to surge toward the town to defend the town—
—when every instinct in his body screams.
A serpent of green poisonous flame uncoils from the horizon.
Its body spans kilometres, venom dripping like liquid stars.
Lou Yuan's eyes widen.
This fire carries Saint King's authority.
His mind snaps to the Star Staff in his dantian.
One pull—
One breath—
And a Supreme Weapon will descend to the battlefield.
He prepares to draw it—
But then—
A calm, absolute voice cuts into the world:
"Chess Field."
Reality freezes.
The poisonous serpent stops mid-air.
Space folds.
Colours drain.
Lou Yuan finds himself standing on a white square of a vast cosmic chessboard.
A suppressive force presses down—not hostile, but absolute.
The Chess Field.
Lou Yuan freezes mid-air as if a giant, unseen hand has placed him gently onto a glowing white square of a celestial board. The poisonous serpent of green flame dissolves into fragments of light, erased before it can reach him.
And above the board—high in the void—
*Merin stands with one hand raised, his field unfurled like a Sovereign's decree.*
He had entered the battlefield through the coordinates he extracted from the human clan's records, returning faster than any other path could have allowed. And the moment he arrived, he saw that the-
*The human race was besieged here as well.*
Black Fire clans. Flame Serpent clans. Countless subordinate races under the Fire Divine Race were tearing into the human town like wolves upon weakened prey.
Merin's eyes had deepened—cold, assessing, dangerous.
He didn't waste a heartbeat.
He didn't analyse.
He didn't observe.
He simply acted.
The Chess Field bloomed across the battlefield like a silent proclamation of dominance. Every enemy within its range froze, their bodies trembling as the laws around them bent into an arrangement beyond their comprehension.
Merin stepped once.
A black square glowed.
A Saint King of the Fire Divine lineage—who had been moments away from killing a human Saint King—vanished in a clean, noiseless erasure. No struggle. No resistance. No escape.
He had been deleted from existence.
With the Saint King gone, Merin turned—his gaze cutting through layers of flame and chaos toward the heart of the battlefield, where Zi Yuanzhen fought desperately against two Saint Kings wielding quasi-supreme weapons.
Merin's aura sharpened like a blade.
And he moved.
One step into the void.
One shift of the Chess Field.
He flew toward the Great Elder—not to watch…
…but to *end* the battle.